All Roads Lead To
by daisymaygirl1
Summary: John checks up on Sam at Stanford and memories follow...


One name.

Jess.

Through shout and sob and cry he heard the name as it bled through the smeared sky towards him.

Jess.

Jessica.

The girl was dead. The demon had taken her. Pinned to the ceiling, dripping blood like tears she had burned.

He had seen the girl before, he had watched her from afar on those secret trips to Stanford when he had crossed state after state in order to relieve that nagging fear that every so often would blossom into a blinding terror and a need to see a different picture of his boy. A different memory from the one tainted by anger and fear and words instantly regretted.

He had first seen her in the Spring.

California is beautiful in the Spring time. Gently seductive with the smell of the ocean and pine trees and blossom.

As he watched he had seen his book-laden son emerge from the house chatting to a tall, sweet-faced girl. He smiled as he saw his son looking at her through the curtain of hair that perpetually covered his eyes. The boy had always hated having his hair cut, he had always needed to see and hear and process everything first; before the world saw him and started to demand and to question and to scare.

With a girlish giggle, she had stretched up to gently kiss the boy before wrapping an arm around his waist. Adjusting the books under one arm the young man looped his other arm around her shoulders, swiftly blinking away the sheen of brightness in his eyes before she saw it.

But John had seen it.

And in it shone the years of longing for love and affection and touch.

A feminine touch.

Mesmerised he had followed them through the streets of the leafy, elegant city. Past the tree-lined streets, the windows glinting in the eastern sun; past the cafes with their parasoled tables fluttering in the morning breeze, the customers sipping on their coffees or tea or whatever people in this place drank for breakfast. Probably something fancy with a fancy name and lots of froth, something John would never dream of asking for in a million years. What was so wrong with just a plain cup of coffee?

Entwined in each other, the young couple were sat beneath a blossom tree, books and papers spread out on the grass around them. Lazily, the boy laid his head in the girl's lap, dropping the book he had been reading onto the dewy grass and then reached up to pull the girl down to kiss her. Her long blond hair tumbled over his face but not before the older man saw the smile that slowly brightened his youngest son's face with happiness.

This young girl had kissed his eyelids and his heart and had slowly taught his child to smile.

He had never done that. He'd taught his son how to fight, how to use a gun and a knife; he'd given him lessons in Latin rituals, in Demonology and vampire lore.

But never had he taught his son how to smile, how to laugh, how to hug.

How to say 'I love you'.

Because he couldn't remember when he had last done those things himself.

He had always thought that his wife would be the one to do those things for their sons. She would be the safe, make-it-all better body to curl up to at the end of the day; the one to kiss away the tears and soothe the grazed knees; the one to listen to their hopes and dreams by the twinkle of starlight and to make them seem possible; the one who would explain decimals and Spanish verbs and the mysteries of a young girl's smile.

Then much later, when his vision had finally cleared past the smoke and the fire, and he had noticed the two small children constantly clinging to his side through town after town, motel after motel, battle after battle he had remembered what he had to do, what he needed to do for them and for Mary…but he couldn't.

He hadn't been able to chance it. His boys had had to grow up quick, they were to be his foot soldiers in this battle, baptized by blood and the madness of revenge.

There wasn't and isn't and never will be any room for smiles and promises in war.

The echoes faded into the dazzle of sunlight and John watched the girl delicately weaving the fallen petals into his son's dark hair. Each petal a secret smile of secrets shared. Each petal a whispered promise made by the glow of firelight. Each petal a truth learnt under sparkling winter skies so long ago, so far away by another boy and another girl.

Sam was asleep, head turned on the girl's lap unknowingly he faced his father. There were no guns. No amulets. No charms. No salt. And yet, in the arms of this loved and loving girl, his young, vulnerable son looked happy and settled… and safe.

The wind blew, laden with the tang of oceans and faraway lands, and, like hope kissed tears at the birth of a baby, the blossoms fell.

Dreaming, the boy smiled.

His next visit had been in the summertime. In a month of brutal, searing heat when a harsh sun blistered the land to a dusty brown, John again drove into Palo Alto. Criss-crossing the country he came to watch over his son.

The streets were deserted, the people beaten down by the sun, sheltering behind the blinds and curtains and shutters of the prosperous town.

He found them again, as he knew he would, under the blossom trees, hiding in the cool green of the dappled shade. Drowsy with the heat they were led on the grass and he watched as Jess languidly traced the flickering reflections of sunlight on Sam's face. Slowly her fingers followed the trickling lines of sweat that ran down his tanned face onto his neck, before disappearing along the jut of his collarbone and under his T-shirt. With a stab of a feeling John couldn't quite decipher he recognised the shirt. It was one that had belonged to his elder son, had been loved by the boy because of the picture of some long haired, guitar thrashing hero that adorned the front. How on earth had Sam come to own it? Dean would never have willingly parted with it which could only mean…As far as he knew his sons hadn't spoken to each other in years but here his younger child was wearing his brother's shirt, a shirt he must have surreptitiously packed with the books and the clothes and the ultimatums and held back tears.

A constant memory of another hero in his brave new world.

Sam rolled over onto his side and, lazily, seductively running a hand down the length of Jess's dress he pressed up against the girl. Their bodies slid together in the sultry haze as they kissed deeply.

Embarrassed and feeling like the stranger he was in his own son's life John turned away. Stretched in front of him, shimmering in the piercing light of long past Californian summer, he saw another young man hidden alongside a pretty young girl in the tall grass of a lemon grove. A pretty young girl with tumbling blond hair and a giggle so suggestive it made his spine tingle as with flickering fingers and with only the blue skies to watch, Mary had taught him how to love.

The heat was intense. The sky a patchwork of turbulent grey and black and red. The flames of hell had risen to threaten the very doors of heaven.

Then suddenly the sky broke, ripped by the howl of thunder and the stab of lightening.

The air changed again.

Ice coated the edges.

Grey and white, colours faded like an old photograph and he knew he was back in Kansas.

A bunch of flowers.

A shaking hand patting down the rough, sticky clods of earth.

A single thought…

Needs to be tidy…Mary likes things to be tidy….

Mary likes things to be in the right place. But this isn't Mary's right place. She needs to hear the lull of the ocean, to taste the smell of the lemons, to be the sunrise…not the sunset.

And she needs to be with him. Together for always and forever. Words she had sung, in their lemon painted kitchen, as she joined in with the sappy love songs she used to love.

Always and forever.

"In the Name of God, I, John, take you, Mary, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow."

He had echoed the minister's words, all the while awestruck at the tears Mary had been softly crying as she listened to those ancient vows, spoken in that cool, blossom scented church in Sacramento.

She had worn a long, simple white dress with a veil of antique lace and carried a bouquet of daisies. The day they got engaged she had been wearing a dress of summer daisies and giggling she had made daisychains, entwining them in his hair as he gruffly but half-heartedly protested against the indignity of it all.

Another memory, more recent.

Another girl weaving flowers in a young boy's hair.

He hadn't been able to get daisies for that other ceremony in that other bleak, cold church.

Out of season he was told.

Why did there have to be a season for sunlight and pretty smiles?

He'd had to have other flowers, formal ones bred for formal occasions. Glowing gaudily in bright shades of pink and orange.

Unnatural flowers for unnatural times.

Like a wife dead too young.

Eyes shut too soon.

A laugh silenced forever.

He'd stood in the churchyard, black against the grey skies above.

"Those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder."

If only it had been that easy…

Tall and slim and achingly young in a slightly too big black jacket, clinging onto those damned flowers as the apologies stumbled from his lips.

He'd laid the flowers down wanting to dig and dig and dig and bring her back to him, gasping for air and sunlight and life.

He whispered to the winds.

One name.

Jess.

And John cried.

As he knew that his son would cry…

Unleashed from that broiling fractured sky the raindrops fell to earth like the confetti of tears at a wedding.

But for now, the boy laughed.

Usually in California the man allowed the sun to soak into his bones, he enjoyed the cool of the night air, watching the sunsets that slowly bled into a silvery night. He would wander until the early hours smelling the smells of his native state as he felt the ocean lull his soul back into rhythm.

This time was different.

The 101 into Palo Alto is a long road, flanked by forests of chattering redwoods along the San Francisco bay. It was a hot, sultry night, even now at the beginning of November, and his bloodless hands slipped as he gripped the steering wheel. Cursing violently he momentarily wiped his hands on his jeans before putting his foot to the pedal. In a blur of pinewood and moonlight the kilometres dissolved one by one by one by one by one…

'Welcome to Palo Alto. Please Drive Carefully'.

Yeah. Fuck that.

He drove faster.

The police scanner was crackling now, the words broken by static but somehow making sense in his jigsawed mind.

He noticed the light first, the foggy, yellow smear in the night sky. Yellow…Then orange…Then red…

Then he noticed the smell. The smell of smoke, the rasp of his throat as it floated malignantly down to his heart.

Then the noise…the sobs, the sirens, the shouts, the screams.

The breaking glass.

The cracking bones.

The licking flames.

The shattering face.

From that choking sky, the ashes fell like the black veil of tears at a funeral.

And the boy cried.


End file.
